Olivia Colman and Ed Harris in a scene from “The Lost Daughter.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal makes everything look easy. Her career is full of understated performances that she’s handled beautifully. Now she has done the same behind the camera as not only the director but also the screenwriter of “The Lost Daughter.” Gyllenhaal has taken Elena Ferrante’s novel and made such a debut in those aforementioned roles that her name is and should be featured on many upcoming awards ballots.

It’s not really surprising that the film works so well with Oscar winner Olivia Colman in front of the lens as Leda, a 48-year-old comp-lit professor on holiday on a sunny Greek beach. Her vacay is, however, quickly tarnished by the arrival of a large, boisterous Greek American family also vacationing there for expectant mother Callie’s (Dagmara Dominczyk) 40th birthday.

The trove of tourists also includes a young mother, Nina (Dakota Johnson), who seems unhappy in her marriage to an ambiguously dangerous man, Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and her toddler daughter Elena (Athena Martin) is a lot to handle.

The group and Leda clash almost immediately when Callie asks if she can move beach chairs (it should be noted her family has taken over the small beach and Leda is the only other person there) and Leda abruptly, but nicely, tells her that she’s just fine where she is. Later, after some Leda some colorful names, Callie offers an olive branch of birthday cake and the two discuss children — this is Callie’s first and Leda has two grown daughters. As they casually chat, Leda lets out a surpassing but apt response for the rest of the film, “Children are a crushing responsibility.”

Seeing the children play, Leda is overcome with emotion and soon forced to examine her past in depth once Elena suddenly goes missing. It’s here that we get a glimpse through flashback (with Jessie Buckley taking on the role of young Leda). She once was a mother on a beach crying out for the daughter who had wandered off.

Elena is quickly found by Leda and returned to her mother, but the doll is still missing, and Elena is distraught as only a toddler can be.

Turns out, Leda has it. Throughout the rest of the quietly paced film, we see present and past Leda drop little bits of herself and her story, allowing us to see the often, in her words, suffocating life in a small flat with a husband and two young daughters, while she is trying to have a successful academic career.

These scenes are mixed with present-day Leda on her holiday, in which she attempts to clean and care for Elena’s doll, befriends Nina and her apartment’s caretaker, Lyle (Ed Harris), and tries to live her best life — all while suffering from dizzy spells and enduring the village’s rude youth. All the while, she reminisces about her daughters, sharing mostly the happy memories with people while the audience sees the rest of those memories.

The film drags a little along the way, and unfortunately does feels its length a bit too much.

But Colman delivers such a powerful performance on her incredibly emotive face that it’s hard to look away.

Buckley also takes her cues from Colman, and together, along with Gyllenhaal’s impactful but sparse script, they paint a clear version of this mother who isn’t as maternal as the typical Hollywood ideal.

“The Lost Daughter” deals with an oftentimes taboo subject of women who, while they clearly love their kids, feel more complete when they’re not around. It is wonderfully nuanced at times, with Colman’s Leda looking back slightly more fondly at motherhood than the reality that Buckley’s flashbacks indicate. She is not a perfect woman and not a perfect mother by standard social mores. It’s also quite clear on the double standard society has for men who are more absent, or totally leave their families altogether, as opposed to women who do the same.

The film is also incredibly well shot. Gyllenhaal and cinematographer Helene Louvart linger beautifully on these women, allowing Nina and the Ledas to be women first, rather than mothers, which is the point the film is decidedly making — women should be women first and complete on their own, regardless of their procreation status.

“The Lost Daughter”

121 minutes

Rated R for sexual content/nudity and language

3.5 stars